The $750-an-hour lawyer who defends Alex Rodriguez is a former Skidmore hockey captain who holds the school record for most career penalty minutes.

"New York's most hated attorney," as the New York Post once called him, was the lawyer who represented Joran van der Sloot, a suspect in the 2005 disappearance of teenager Natalee Holloway in Aruba, and also the 6-foot, 210-pound forward who once got into a three-on-one brawl in defense of a fellow Thoroughbred.

"One of our guys, like the smallest guy on the team, he gets hit from behind," says Joe Tacopina, who played at Skidmore from 1984-88. "The guy who did it, I went after him, said to him, 'What are you crazy?' I wound up in the corner with him, and I feel two other guys pushing me. Now I'm in the corner with three guys around me. I said, 'I'm not going to try and skate out of this.' "

Tacopina dropped his gloves. With one hand, he grabbed the facemasks of two players, and he used his other fist to knock the third out the way. All of them tumbled to the ice.

"I just stepped over them and went to the bench," Tacopina says, laughing. "Then the ref came and escorted me to a different bench. I was so furious with the guy who did it, and I guess you could say I served out justice."

The metaphor seems too easy, but Tacopina says it's just right: He fought for his teammates the way he defends his clients, from former state senator Hiram Monserrate to Michael Jackson and now A-Rod. A New York tabloid called him "The Devil's Advocate." At Skidmore, he was just Joey, so respected for his loyalty that teammates elected him captain his senior year.

"I still remember Coach coming into the locker room, handing me that jersey," says Tacopina, who agreed to a phone interview this past week to talk about his hockey career. "To this day, it's one of the proudest moments of my life."

Tacopina's been at the forefront of A-Rod's defense, railing against what he's called baseball's "shameful endeavor" with the kind of tenacity those around the program remember well.

They've read about Tacopina's 49-foot yacht, Maserati and $6,500 watch, but his brand of hockey was more befitting the kid who grew up in a blue-collar Brooklyn neighborhood. On the ice he rarely started fights, but he finished many; he also finished with a respectable 50 career points, including 21 goals, a fair number attributable to his fortitude in front of the net.

"Joey was never a standout, a guy who'd be on the power play, but he worked hard and had a positive attitude," said Paul Dion, the Skidmore coach at the time. "He was a very coachable guy — except when somebody wronged one of his teammates. He'd go berserk. His eyes would get all glassy, and it was like controlling a mad dog. But I have good memories of Joe Tacopina. He was a real good influence on our program."

Tacopina played as the Skidmore hockey program was still in its infancy. The team was hosting games in a since-demolished rink they affectionately called "The Barn." Inside the plastic sheeting that served as walls, the temperature routinely dipped below zero.

Once, Tacopina's former coach recalls, Tacopina was sitting on the bench while a player on the other team ran over Skidmore's goalie. Tacopina kept telling his coach, "Let me go, let me go, let me go."

Finally, Dion relented, and Tacopina went right after the player.

"Joe went down there ... grabbed the kid," Dion says. "The kid went down in a heap. I thought he was dead. His face was all cut up. Joe just comes over, sits down and the referee looks at him and says, 'You gotta get out of here.' "

Another time, Tacopina says, the other team had been slashing at his arm, where everyone knew he had a still-sore bruise. Frustrated, he hopped over the boards for his shift with no goal other than clobbering the player with the puck. He hit another player so hard, he broke the player's collarbone.

"I can still remember the collision, like a train hitting a brick wall," says Tacopina, who later visited the player in the hospital. "It was a clean hit. I didn't even get a penalty. He was OK, wasn't paralyzed, thank God."

Skidmore, Dion said, "softened Tacopina's edges" before he graduated and went on to get a law degree from the University of Bridgeport.

But his former coach still sees flashes of the old Joey on television.

"When he believes something, he's going to fight for it as much as he can," Dion says. "I saw him on TV one time, he was debating Johnnie Cochran. Johnnie was trying to make a point, he cut Joey off, and Joey shut him right down. You could see that glassy look in his eyes again."

A-Rod could seek an injunction while appealing his suspension for the entire 2014 season. Most have dismissed his chances of succeeding, but Rodriguez has said he intends to show up for spring training — and his lawyer has that look in his eyes.